“Definitely somewhere on Earth, Ace. 1988, I think...? But something's different about it...”

*Suddenly the Doctor ducks to avoid a random discharge of electricity aimed at his finger. He turns around, and running towards him is... an adorable, cuddly Pikachu!?*

What would happen if the T.A.R.D.I.S. landed in the Kanto region? Well, I imagine that it would start a bit like this...

I created this simple retro mix as a way of celebrating the 20th anniversary of Pokémon on the 27th of February this year. Happy Pokémon Day, everyone :D (even though this could easily be ridiculously early/late xD)

But, in a totally different vain, here is an attempt to be as faithful as possible - up until the Doctorin The Tardis drums kick in - but the twist is, the tune is being synthesized live by a £4 Raspberry Pi Zero, with a 99p USB audio interface thingie. Description (lifted from my SoundCloud page) -

This track has 8 Virtual Analog monosynths, one wavetable synth (polysynth but with polyphony set to 1 as I am somewhat lax with the noteOff messages throughout!) and a single sample replay synth for the Tardis takeoff effect.

The VAsynths are :
Channel 1 : kick/tom - noise, bandpass filtered slightly resonant, and an EG to shape the amplitude
Channel 2 : snare (same setting as 1 but up the scale)
Channel 3 : the old faithful 'Martyn Ware Glitterclap' - these 3 are not exactly canonical but I wanted to add in a blast of "Human League do Gary Glitter / Doctorin the Tardis" for the outro. This is a burst of noise modulated by a square wave LFO, shaped by an EG to become a decaying train of noise pulses, bandpass filtered and quite resonant to emphasise the clappiness
Channels 4 and 5 - a pair of Radiophonic Wobulators, sin waves which warm up (some Phase Distortion, some morphing to slightly square) under a slow ramping EG, which also ramps up the LFO amplitude that is FM and AMing them. These have a bend range of +- 24 semitones for the giant 2 octave swoops
Channel 6 - the diddly dum bass riff. This is really velocity sensitive, both in amplitude and in brightness. OSCB gets louder under velocity, and both OSCs sharpen up under hard bashing - the 'fine pitch' modulation output is hooked into a fast EG. So really hard hits sound like plucked strings, sharpening immediately under tension then going true very quickly
Channel 7 - bass slurp for the grace notes - a slightly less bright version of the riff, and with a larger reverb send amount to distance it
Channel 8 - is a noise generator and bandpass filter with resonance to be played manually (hence hamfisted noises throughout), with heavy feedback delay to add SFX swishy whooshy things - really spacey, dude!
Channel 9 - wavetable synth for the 'melodica' melodic notes
Channel 10 - EXTERMINATE! Samples, for the heck of it

Can you believe it - 10 synths, 8 of them virtual analog, on £4.99 of computer hardware. 2016 is an insane place to be.

Enjoy.

]]>PodcastsFri, 16 Mar 2018 13:13:52 -0700http://whomix.windbubbles.net/api/remix/download/543.mp3Countdownhttp://whomix.windbubbles.net/api/remix/download/542.mp3
Here are two slightly different versions of the same composition.

This is a completely new take on the Doctor Who theme - it uses no samples, nor any “rips” from any current Doctor Who themes, classic or new, or remix. This was built from the ground up.

The story behind this piece is I found myself asking the question, “what if David Lowe, composer of the BBC Countdown” had got his hands on Doctor Who and had composed a piece to be used in a similar way?” In other words - what if Doctor Who was introduced with a countdown like the BBC news is introduced?

So I got to work, experimenting and playing, and this is what I came up with.